Crisis Incidents
The last decade has been riddled with crisis on the global as well as domestic scale. Crisis on many fronts have been noticed for instance natural calamities, terrorism issues, scandals, technological issues and financial disarray. Even so, most leaders aren't fully up to the task in terms of leading a company or society, in general, out of a crisis successfully. Experts at the start of this decade went hand in hand to eliminate the Y2K bug, which became the first Internet crisis. On September 11, 2001, the terrorist attacks in New York City on World Trade Center threw U.S. off balance. Next, the Katrina Hurricane struck with full vengeance in the gulf region which tore apart communities as we know it. The Tsunami of 2004 was another tragic event which rendered millions of people homeless. Last but the not the least, the recession of 2008 shutdown major corporations as financial markets crumbled. The H1N1 disease occurred in 2009 (OECD, 2011).
These recent events indicate that crisis is unavoidable. Most of the time, the leadership team is ill prepared for the crisis situation. Not being able to handle the crisis situation can lead to severe organizational crisis imposing disastrous consequences on a long-term basis affecting the reputation, organization's profits, human resources and market share. It is imperative for the organizations and its leaders to maintain a positive outlook. The fact of the matter is that executives and leadership team lack crisis management training and practical crisis management experience in their portfolio (OECD, 2011).
Hence, the failure is evident. The focus is on relationships with stakeholders and partners when leadership teams address crisis situations. But the fact of the matter is that public relations and public speaking will do more harm than good for solving such disastrous crisis. Management has no need of creating competencies for a crisis situation. It takes risk management and strategic planning to plan for crisis, while leaders must attend to such crisis aptly. They should be willing to learn from blunders and forward their learning's to their subordinates. This instills a change in the organization. A true leader must prepare a unit for such situation and hope to mitigate a crisis. The top management must be in full control of deflecting a crisis. Its involvement fuels motivation throughout the hierarchy (OECD, 2011).
This paper draws on examples from crisis incidents to make substantive points about leadership. The incidents chosen are among those that are relevant to one or more issues of leadership. The incidents have been chosen to reinforce one another, contrast with one another, or show different facets, but they all are connected by the logic of the argument and not be random choices.
Background
There are two kinds of crisis situations- Crisis which builds up slowly and an unexpected crisis. An unexpected crisis can greatly influence the day-to-day activities of an organization on a temporary business. The natural calamities can hinder the activities bringing them to a standstill. The warning time is next to nil (Erickson, 2006).
Smoldering crisis starts small in an organization and adds up with the passage of time. They pose a serious threat to the stakeholders and put the management team in jeopardy (Erickson, 2006). With regards to stages of a crisis management, one can divide them into the following 5 stages:
1: Signal Detection:
Whilst they are much less observable in most crisis that take place abruptly and with no warning (e.g., all-natural calamity), nearly all other kinds of crisis have several early indicators which point to a top organizational management that something is faulty. A gradually developing rise in consumer issues or perhaps defect rates, for instance, could be an indication of an emerging crisis in the quality of the products being sold (Barton, 2007).
2: Prevention and Preparation stage of Crisis
The preparation as well as prevention stage is certainly one where managers participate in activities to organize for or avoid an emerging or present crisis. Most of these activities can include creating crisis guidelines and
Crisis Intervention: Crisis situations are usually sudden, unexpected, life-threatening time-restricted incidents that may overpower a person's ability to react adaptively. During these critical incidents, the extreme events may contribute to individual crises, traumatic stress, and even Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Generally, a crisis can be described as an incident that occurs when people are confronted with issues or problems that cannot be solved. The irresolvable incidents contribute to an increase in anxiety,
Crisis Management Uncertainty in regards to individual activities within a large student population is always a cause for concern. It is difficult to govern or even deter the questionable activities of a predominately young student population. This problem is exacerbated due to the rebellious nature of young students in regards to politics, social interactions, student programing and more. Public news often comes from universities with questionable activities such as fraternity hazing,
Crisis Management This is a hostage situation, because Bradley is holding Susan, her professor, and nine other students in a room. Bradley has weapons and is in a distraught emotional state, refusing to let any of the hostages leave. "In most hostage incidents, the explicit threat is to the hostage's life. It is not the loss of property, status, or belonging to a community that is at stake. Life itself is
Crisis Negotiation and Deception Crisis negotiation entails law enforcement communication and interaction with people threatening to cause actual bodily harm or property destruction. This may include hostage takers, suicidal individuals, stalkers, and barricaded subjects (McMains & Mullins, 2010). As can be exemplified by James Harvey's case, the distress characterizing such incidents coupled with lack of full control over the situation may tempt law enforcers to engage in deceptive tactics aimed at
Crisis Management Bomb Threat The most important step in the crisis management is gathering situational information. Decisions and responses should be based on the information at hand, evaluated on a situation-by-situation basis. If the bomb threat occurs in a school, it must be taken seriously. However, "many school bomb threats have been made by students seeking to disrupt the school day and to get out of school," (National School Safety and Security
The recent proliferation of such incidents stained My Space's image. While the largest part of communication taking place through My Space is usually harmless, the incidents alarmed parents and thus created negative publicity. My Space responded fast with a plan of imposing harsher safety measures in order to provide protection to its users from stalkers and sexual predators. The campaign offers not only online protection, but also education to parents and
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